


Accurate

by dogmatix



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos is a scientist, Cecil is Inhuman, Gen, M/M, small amount of gratuitous angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogmatix/pseuds/dogmatix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has never been one to stop looking for explanations or the truth.  This poses a problem for Cecil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accurate

**Author's Note:**

> I have not listened to all of the episodes, so if I'm missing something glaring, my apologies.  
> (Edited to fix an error)

Cecil’s hearts sank when Carlos frowned at him and reached an uncertain hand towards Cecil’s forehead.  There was an intense, scrutinizing look on the scientist’s face. 

Cecil took another pull of his milkshake, pretending he wasn’t focused just as intently on Carlos.

Carlos’ hand hovered, uncertain, then pulled back slowly.  But not dismissively.  Darn.

Humans had an automatic defense built into their psyche that normally made their minds simply skip over things that were too unusual, too far outside the boundaries of ‘sane.’  Repeated exposure could start to wear away at that defense though, and Carlos had been in Night Vale long enough to start to see.  Worse, the scientist was _trying_ to see.  As long as Carlos couldn’t see him, Cecil, Carlos was safe. If Carlos saw him – any part of the more… obscure parts of him – at the wrong time, or really at any time…. Fear, panic, and rejection were the best he could hope for.

“Cecil-“

“I think we should take a break from each other. Permanently,” Cecil interrupted a bit guiltily, fiddling his straw through the dregs of the banana-chocolate milkshake.

That did it.  Carlos snapped out his intent scrutiny, attention scattered on the floor like so many pennies. “What, why?”

It was a fair question.  They’d been getting on really well.  Once Carlos had bent enough to ignore Night Vale’s more obvious eccentricities, the man had proved to be quite easygoing, and this was his and Carlos’ third date.

Cecil had rarely met a human who was so beautiful – that _hair_ – and so interesting.  But he was going to lose him anyway, and a quick break was better – easier to cauterize the wound and move on.  He hadn’t thought he’d ever need to – so few humans really tried to _see_.  Leave it to Carlos to be the exception though.

Cecil leaned in and pressed his lips to the side of Carlos’ face, leaving a sticky smear of banana-chocolate milkshake.  He fought the urge to explain, and stood up, letting Big Rico’s din swirl around him.  “I’m sorry.”

Now, in any reasonable version of Night Vale, that would have been the end of it.  But of course, Carlos always did his best to set Night Vale on its ear. It usually didn’t work, but the poor dear kept trying.  In this case however, it looked like Carlos was even more determined than usual.

The next afternoon, Carlos stood outside the DJ booth, glowering at Cecil as Cecil pretended to ignore the scientist and his sculpted jaw.

“Why?” Carlos asked when Cecil had finally concluded his broadcast and was reluctantly leaving the booth.  Cecil wanted to explain, but there was no way to convey it in English. “You can’t understand,” Cecil gave Carlos the most complete explanation he could.

Carlos’ perfect jaw clenched, and Cecil studied the intricate play of muscle and skin on his beloved Carlos. “Try me.”

“There’s nothing I could say that would make it make sense,” Carlos admitted sadly, all the organs that acted roughly approximately to hearts laying heavy in their respective locations.

“Cecil, I live in _Night Vale_.  The clocks are fake, there’s a miniature city under the bowling alley, every day I see a house that doesn’t exist, and angels help old ladies with their knitting. _Try me_.”

There was a stretch of silence that grew tenser the longer it continued.  Partly due to shock.  There was a difference between willful ignorance, which was an art form among the population of Night Vale, and acceptance. This almost sounded like the latter.

“Does it have to do with why you have three eyes?” Carlos asked, staring straight at the third eye on Cecil’s forehead, which widened in surprise.

“You can see that?” Cecil asked faintly.  He’d known Carlos was starting to see things, but to see, acknowledge, and admit to it, was something else.

“It’s probably part of why I’m going grey,” Carlos said with a rueful brush to the grey at his temples, “but yes.”

“And that doesn’t… alarm you?”

“…..No. Maybe that makes me crazy, but.. no.”

Cecil had already been regretting and second-guessing his decision to break it off, so it really didn’t take long to make up his mind.  “Come back tomorrow. During lunch?”

“Okay.” Carlos looked at him intently. Either trying to gauge his sincerity or maybe fixing Cecil’s three-eye configuration in his memory.

It was a long night.

Still, when Carlos showed up the next day, Cecil had the packet of about fifty pages stapled and ready to go.

“What’s this?” Carlos asked, frowning handsomely at the thick mathematical formulae and obscure graphs packed tightly onto each page.

“I’m aware of where human romantic relationships usually lead,” Cecil started, not quite ready to give a bald and unguarded answer.  He’d learned that lesson with the Station Management, at least for the time being.

“And?” Carlos asked, frowning up at Cecil now.

“And you might not be as aware of where a romantic relationship could lead with me. Or, or even what I mean when I say ‘me.’”

Carlos’ beautiful eyes narrowed. He hefted the stapled pages. “So this is…?”

“Me.”

Carlos looked at him, then down at the packet. “I see.”

Cecil went back to his booth, having missed lunch, but he wasn’t really hungry.  Not when Carlos was right on the other side of the door.  Cecil came out later to find Carlos, hair adorably mussed, with several pages of notes strewn over the coffee table he’d appropriated.

Over the next few days, Carlos became a fixture at NVPR, arriving with the dawn and leaving when Cecil did.  The stack of notes grew at an alarming rate, and Carlos started bringing in books that, in passing, Cecil could see pertained to some of the more advanced branches of human mathematics.

The next week, Carlos had new books from who knew where, about even more obscure and rarified areas of theoretical mathematics.  Carlos usually had a frown etched between his brows these days, and Cecil took to bringing an extra two sandwiches for Carlos’ lunch and leaving them by the man’s elbow at the appropriate time of day.  He even had to drag Carlos out to Big Rico’s on Friday when he learned that the bleary-eyed man had not yet been by for his mandated weekly slice of pizza.

The week after that, Carlos seemed to be constantly on the phone to some of his university friends and professors, usually arguing some equation or other with them.  Each day the man came in he looked more and more haggard, but also more and more determined.  When Cecil was done with Thursday’s broadcast, Carlos accosted him as he walked by.

“This is impossible!” he said, jabbing a finger at a transcribed copy of one of the lines of the formula, circled in red and with notations and partial theories flocking around it like mad crows. “Utterly impossible! Everyone I’ve talked to says that it shouldn’t work.”

“Well-“

“I mean, for this to work you’d almost have to-“

Carlos eyes widened, realization like dawn breaking over a lush valley. “Of course!”

Cecil stood by in bemused wonderment as Carlos ensconced himself in the nest of books and papers and started scribbling furiously, peppered with an occasional ‘aha!’  Cecil itched to run his hands through the messy black locks that framed Carlos’ perfect face. 

It took half-an-hour before Carlos sat back, rubbing his eyes and looking dazed, initial frenzy of new note-taking completed. “Let’s get you home,” Cecil said, smiling indulgently as he helped Carlos upright.

More than a little drunk on fatigue, Carlos still managed to get ahold of Cecil’s arm on the second try. He studied the bare forearm intently.  “I’m seeing this, right?”

“That depends on what you’re seeing,” Cecil teased.

Carlos traced one of the shifting tattoos with his thumb, following it as it curled.

Cecil cleared his throat, swallowed.  “Yes.”

“Good.”

Friday was much quieter than Cecil had gotten used to, Carlos mostly going over his notes and double checking his figures, then triple checking them against the original pages – now much bent and dog-eared – that Cecil had given him originally.

When Cecil had wrapped it up for the day – for the week really – he found Carlos with his books in neat stacks and his notes bound.  Carlos stood up and put down Cecil’s stapled packet.

Carlos took Cecil’s hands in his. “You’re beautiful,” he said, something dazed in his look.

“You followed all of it?”

“I think my brain bent in new and interesting shapes, “ Carlos huffed with amusement, “I’m not exactly a math major. Or, I wasn’t, before this. But yes.”  He took a moment to collect himself. “You’re like. An iceberg, and all we can see is the part that’s above water. It doesn’t mean what we see is fake, or false, but there’s _so much more_ and humans just aren’t built to-“

The chair behind Carlos scraped across the floor just enough to make a noise, and Cecil blushed a bit. “Uh-“

Carlos got a faraway look in his eyes and Cecil could almost see him doing the calculations, then reached back about a foot and a half until his hand met something that wasn’t flesh, or metal, or anything else a human could identify, which curled out of a dark corner that didn’t work quite the way it should.  Cecil felt the strange prickle of human flesh on a part of him that hadn’t been touched in decades, and shivered.  He’d forgotten how prickly human touch was, like static, all that energy right on the surface.

“And-  you’re okay with that?”  Cecil was small fry in comparison to things like the Station Management, and probably wouldn’t drive a human who was prepared for him insane just by manifesting small bits of himself.  Probably.  But finding acceptance of what he was, instead of just willful ignorance…

The message communicated itself through Carlos’ hand on him before Carlos even opened his mouth, but there was still something special and sweet about Carlos’ soft smile.  “Yes.”


End file.
